Translating a World on the Edge

Recently, I re-read The Moviegoer by Walker Percy. I’d read it  many years ago–because it had won The National Book Award and because Percy was a southerner from New Orleans, a Catholic, and a physician.

I liked the book, but in my naïve and youthful perspective, it was just a story about a man who went to movies to see himself in the lives of movie stars. I didn’t understand much about life back then. I didn’t know that life can turn on you and that you have to have an absolute anchor or the currents will steer you where you don’t intend to go. Now I realize all that was Percy’s theme in the novel.

Though it was written decades ago, The Moviegoer has much to say about today’s reality-show-world whose ‘stars’ are heroes to many. It speaks to the values that we DON’T expect from Hollywood or from the flat-screened, superficial world of television that we follow. In the novel, this is the kind of world the main character, Binx Bolling, has taken for his own reality, but it’s a reality he begins to question: Why is he here? What is his purpose?

Binx initiates a personal ‘search’ for answers he never seems to find because he looks in the wrong places. In his mind, he converses with a screen star– Rory Calhoun, a popular actor of Percy’s time—about sex, about money; all important to Binx. His drug-addicted paramour and cousin, Kate, claims to be part of Binx’s search, too, but what she wants is Binx to tell her what to do. She’s a follower,  too afraid  to“act” on her own. In fact, neither of them have the courage or stamina to “act.” Both have come through tragedy—Binx the Korean War, Kate the loss of someone she may have loved. Their hard times have made them searchers, but still, they use excuses to avoid being decisive.

Walker Percy’s descriptions of place, especially New Orleans, as well as every character playing on the screen of Binx’s mind, are close to impeccable. There is no question of what Percy wants us to see–that Binx does not take in the true, indeed divine, essence of life, in himself or in others. The one exception is his half-brother, Lonnie, who of all his family members, is the bonus in Binx’s life.

Finally, in the last pages of the book, it is Ash Wednesday, and Percy sets forth serious questions for Binx, and for his readers. Binx isn’t watching a movie, but a black man coming out of church.

“His forehead is an ambiguous sienna color and pied: it is impossible to be sure that he received ashes.… It is impossible to say why he is here. Is it part and parcel of the complex business of coming up in the world? Or is it because he believes that God himself is present here at the corner of Elysian Fields and Bons Enfants? Or is he here for both reasons: through some dim dazzling trick of grace, coming for the one and receiving the other as God’s own importunate bonus? It is impossible to say.”

Walker Percy is a Catholic writer of the highest sort. His handling of the first-person narrative is wonderful. His insight into people is brilliant. The Moviegoer is powerful for many reasons—not the least is that it stirs the reader’s consideration of a ‘search’  into his own, perhaps flat-screen, reality. Even if you’ve read it before, another read is well worth it.

My husband and I once stopped at an overlook on The Blue Ridge Parkway. It was Fall, so the mountains beyond us were blazing with color; every shade of red, orange, and yellow. To the side of the overlook, we noticed a little-worn path that led into the woods below. We took it.

Step by step we went down into an odd, emerald-colored shade, almost as if we had descended into a different season. There, we found a stream running between fat tree trunks and meandering down and around small rises in the earth. (more…)

PROCRASTINATION

POSTPONEMENT

STALLING

Here’s how singer/songwriter KT Oslin put those traits to music:

“Come next Monday
I’m goin’ to bed early
I won’t talk dirty for a week or two
Goin’ on a diet
Just like sugar, honey
Come next Monday
I’m gonna give up on you! (more…)

Forgiveness is a spiritual work of mercy, but some people won’t do it. You can apologize to them for a wrong you may have done, you can bake them a cake, take them a meal, pay their bills, or keep their children. Oh yes, they’ll let you do all that. But they won’t forgive you. They don’t seem able to let go of the past.
Why?
Why is the past– especially one that’s not so rosy– important to them? What attracts them to the role of forever playing a victim? Like the elephant who never forgot an injury, they are tied past grievances. (more…)

One year in the Fall, my husband and I sat on our boat dock when the moon was at its fullest, its reflection floating on the dark surface of the lake like pieces of a silver puzzle.

On both ends of the dock, where posts held up the metal roof, were spider webs lit up by the moonlight. One of the webs was strong, but delicate-looking, and classically precise; an ever growing circle, attached symmetrically by what must have been a ‘craftsman’ spider. The web was beautiful, in fact, it was perfect.

The other was a ramshackle sort of web, attached in a haphazard way to the post, almost like the run-down house of a derelict drug dealer. Loose strands hung from it, and there was no discernible circle to the web at all. (more…)

We rarely pay attention to the plain and simple things in our world. We notice the flamboyant, the extravagant. Who would not notice a sunset such as this? “Wow! How beautiful!” we might say.

Yet the smallest of particles are responsible for the stunning sunset. You might say they are responsible for its performance. These tiny molecules change the direction of light, causing it to scatter, resulting in the brilliant show of color. The value of the sunset, like the value of a person, is found within. But when we look at either of them, we don’t consider what’s ‘behind the scene.’ (more…)

On my kitchen counter is a stone bowl on a stem–a fruit and vegetable compote that once belonged to my mother, and her mother before her. In it, I keep bananas and tomatoes, same as my mother did.

Some of the tomatoes are still green when I put them in the bowl, but that’s okay because the bananas have a way of ripening them. My mother likened it to friendship and love. “One ripens first and then helps the other along.”

And like her, I cannot waste the uneaten bananas. I simply cannot bring myself to discard a banana only because it’s past its prime for peeling and eating. I have to make something else out of it. Banana nut bread, muffins, cake—something!

Naturally, my children always liked this family quirk, when an aging fruit they might have discarded is changed into something fresh, new–and edible. (more…)